State Theatre presents The Canterbury Tales

The Aquila Theatre Company brings the classic literary text, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, down to earth Sunday, April 29 at 3pm at the State Theatre. In this production, Aquila brings a modern sensibility and freshness to a classic without diminishing it. As if Monty Python met Umberto Eco at a Medieval pageant, Aquila’s The Canterbury Tales promises to be a fast moving, deliciously saucy, slightly naughty, romp.

Tickets range from $20-35 (group, college student, and senior discounts available).

The Canterbury Tales, written in Middle English by Chaucer in the late 14th century (two of them are in prose, the rest in verse), is a collection of tales told by a group of pilgrims to pass the time on a pilgrimage from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Some make the journey out of a sense of piety, others for spiritual renewal, or just for the sheer fun of it.

The Canterbury Tales is considered one of the cornerstones of western drama. It draws on a rich tradition of classical Greek and Roman poetry and Medieval literature to produce a work of sublime storytelling that is poignant, hilarious, spiritually uplifting, wonderfully lewd yet thoroughly thought provoking. Some of the tales are serious and others comical. All are highly accurate in describing the traits and faults of human nature. Religious malpractice is a major theme. Most of the tales are interlinked with undercurrents of similar themes, and some are told in retaliation for other tales in the form of an argument. The work is sophisticated, visceral, and surprisingly challenging and entertaining for audiences of all ages.

This stage adaptation follows in Aquila’s tradition of theatrical utilitarianism—making the greatest classical works understandable to the largest audience, thus rendering them fresh and accessible to a new generation of viewers.

Aquila believes passionately that the stage is the place for Chaucer’s tales to entertain and captivate a new generation of American audiences. Aquila has become internationally renowned for its uncanny ability to bring a modernly hip sensibility and a universally accessible freshness to classical texts without diminishing these great works. -- www.statetheatrenj.org

(www.huliq.com - 24 April 2007)